Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive 4)

“Power,” Adolin said.

That response—the same one she’d given to Ialai—now seemed so simplistic. Mraize, and his inscrutable master Iyatil, were deliberate, precise people. Perhaps they were merely seeking to glean leverage or wealth from the chaos of the end of the world. Shallan realized she would be disappointed to discover that their plans were so pedestrian. Any corpse robber on a battlefield could exploit the misfortune of others.

Mraize was a hunter. He didn’t wait for opportunities. He went out and made them.

“What’s that?” Adolin asked, nodding to the book in her hand.

“Before she died,” Shallan said. “Ialai gave me a hint that led me to search the room and find this.”

“That’s why you didn’t want the guards to do it,” he said. “Because one of them might be a spy or assassin. Storms.”

“You might want to reassign your soldiers to boring, out-of-the-way posts for a season.”

“These are some of my best men!” Adolin complained. “Highly decorated! They just pulled off an extremely dangerous covert operation.”

“So give them a rest at some quiet post,” Shallan said. “Until we figure this out. I’ll watch my agents. If I discover it’s one of them, you can bring the men back.”

He sulked at the suggestion; he hated the idea of punishing a group of good men because one of them might be a spy. Adolin might claim he was different from his father, but in fact they were two shades of the same paint. Often, two similar colors clashed worse than wildly different ones would.

Shallan kicked the bag of notes and letters that Gaz had gathered, resting at their feet. “We’ll give that to your father’s scribes, but I’ll look through this book personally.”

“What’s in it?” Adolin asked, leaning to the side so he could see—but there were no pictures.

“I haven’t read the entire thing,” Shallan said. “It seems to be Ialai’s attempts to piece together what the Ghostbloods are planning. Like this page—a list of terms or names her spies had heard. She was trying to define what they were.” Shallan moved her finger down the page. “Nalathis. Scadarial. Tal Dain. Do you recognize any of those?”

“They sound like nonsense to me. Nalathis might have something to do with Nalan, the Skybreaker Herald.”

Ialai had noticed the same connection, but indicated these names might be places—ones she could not find in any atlas. Perhaps they were like Feverstone Keep, the place Dalinar had seen in his visions. Somewhere that had disappeared so long ago, no one remembered the name anymore.

Circled several times on one page at the end of the list was the word “Thaidakar” with the note, He leads them. But who is he? The name seems a title, much like Mraize. But neither are in a language I know.

Shallan was pretty sure she’d heard Mraize use the name Thaidakar before.

“So, this is our new mission?” Adolin asked. “We find out what these Ghostblood people are up to, and we stop them.” He took the palm-size notebook from her and flipped through the pages. “Maybe we should give this to Jasnah.”

“We will,” she said. “Eventually.”

“All right.” He gave it back, then put his arm around her and pulled her close. “But promise me that you—and I mean all of you—will avoid doing anything crazy until you talk to me.”

“Dear,” she said, “considering who you’re talking to, anything I am prone to try will be—by definition—crazy.”

He smiled at that, but gave her another comforting hug. She settled into the nook between his arm and chest, though he was too muscly to make a good pillow. She continued reading, but it wasn’t until an hour or so later that she realized—despite dancing around the topic with him—she hadn’t revealed she was a member of the Ghostbloods.

They were likely to put Shallan in the middle of whatever they were up to. So far—despite telling herself she was spying on them—she’d basically achieved every goal they’d asked of her. That meant a crisis was coming. The inflection point, past which she could not continue down this duplicitous path. Keeping secrets from Adolin was eating at her from the inside. Fueling Formless, pushing it toward a reality.

She needed a way out. To leave the Ghostbloods, break ties. Otherwise they’d get inside her head. And it was way too crowded in there already.

I didn’t kill Ialai though, Shallan thought. I was close to it, but I didn’t. So I’m not theirs entirely.

Mraize would want to speak to her about the mission, and about some other things she’d been doing for him, so she could bet on him visiting her soon. Maybe when he did, she would finally find the strength to break with the Ghostbloods.

A tin cage will cause the fabrial to diminish nearby attributes. A painrial, for example, can numb pain. Note that advanced designs of cages can use both steel and iron as well, changing the fabrial’s polarity depending on which metals are pushed to touch the gemstone.

—Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

Kaladin was feeling quite a bit better as they neared the Shattered Plains. A few hours’ flying through open sky and sunlight always left him feeling refreshed. Right now, the man who had crumpled before Moash in that burning building seemed an entirely different person.

Syl flew up beside him as a ribbon of light. Kaladin’s Windrunners were Lashing Dalinar and the others; all Kaladin had to do was fly at the head of them all and look confident.

I’ve spoken to Yunfah again, Syl said in his mind. He’s here on the Plains. I think he wants to talk to you.

“Tell him to come up and see me, then,” Kaladin said. His voice was lost to the rushing wind, but Syl would catch it anyway.

She flitted off, followed by a few windspren. From this distance, Kaladin could almost make out the pattern to the Shattered Plains. So he gave a hand signal and reduced to a single Lashing.

A short time later, two blue-white ribbons of light came zipping up toward him. He could somehow tell Syl from the other one. There was a specific shade to her, as familiar to him as his own face.

The other light resolved into the shape of a tiny old man reclining on a small cloud as he flew beside Kaladin. The spren, Yunfah, had been bonded to Vratim, a Windrunner who had died a few months ago. At first, when they’d begun losing Radiants in battle, Kaladin had worried it would cause him to lose the spren as well. Syl, after all, had gone comatose many centuries ago when she’d lost her first Radiant.

Others, however, handled it differently. The majority, though grieved, seemed to want another bond soon—as it helped them move past the pain of loss. Kaladin didn’t pretend to understand spren psychology, but Yunfah had seemed to deal with the death of his Radiant well. Treating it as a battlefield loss of an ally, rather than the destruction of part of his own soul. Indeed, Yunfah appeared willing to bond another.

So far, he hadn’t—and for reasons Kaladin couldn’t understand. And as far as Kaladin knew, he was the sole free honorspren among them.

He says, Syl told Kaladin in his mind, that he’s still considering picking a new knight. He’s narrowed it down to five possibilities.